Tuesday, November 1, 2011

FLASH to Michelle: America is the Land of Opportunity

Michelle Obama made an appearance at a fundraiser in New Orleans this afternoon in which she spent 22 minutes preaching to the choir about her husband's American Jobs Act and the "squeezing" of the middle class in which she thinks the Republicans apparently want to engage.

The fundraiser had a $5,000 minimum ticket price so I doubt too many "middle class" folks were there.

"Will we be a country where opportunity is limited to a few at the top
or will we give every child the chance to succeed no matter where they
are from or what they look like or how much money their parents have?
Who are we?"

I do not believe that "opportunity is limited to a few at the top" in this country.

What about Steve Jobs? Would you consider his background as privileged? His dad was a machinist and his mom an accountant. He did not attend exclusive private schools. He studied. He worked hard. He learned.

What about Obama's friend, Oprah Winfrey? She was born to an unwed teenage mother. Did that limit her opportunities? Were her aspirations crushed by the wicked Republicans? Or did she figure out how to fight her way to the top?

I think the point Mrs. Obama misses, and maybe why she's so "mad," is that America IS the land of opportunity. You make your own luck, I've always heard. Life does not owe you a fair shake. Life owes you nothing. Certainly government does not have to intervene and ensure that everyone gets a fair shake.

Opportunity is not limited in America. It doesn't matter how much money your parents have. It doesn't matter what you look like.

Michelle asks, "Will we be a country where opportunity is limited to a few at the top or will we give every child the chance to succeed no matter where they are from or what they look like or how much money their parents have?"

That's a smokescreen question packaged for "the masses."

In response, we are supposed to think she agrees with most Americans desire that every child continue to have at least a chance at the American Dream.

What she really wants, though, is to limit opportunity to the few at the top--her top.

Michelle and her party are doing their best to centralize power into fewer governmental hands and to tighten everyone else's belt through taxation and regulation. If that isn't limiting opportunity to fewer and fewer "at the top," nothing is.

@Tony -- How about the regulations requiring that 55% of mortgages funded by taxpayers through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac go to people at or below the median income? By 2007, as a result of those regulations alone, more than 25% of U.S. mortgages ($3.5 trillion) were bad loans. That lost $3.5 trillion represents cumulatively huge missed opportunities for those taxpayers whose money funded those bad loans, not to mention the tragic losses of money, time, energy, and motivation of the indebted people who lost (or are currently losing) their homes. The ripple effect has been obscene: just look at the unemployment rate resulting largely from the burst housing bubble.

That's just one example. I could go on and on, and so could almost every business person spending large amounts of what would otherwise be productive time (and overhead) just dealing with stacks of government regulations.

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I am a writer and high school English teacher living in Shreveport. My new book entitled Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and Melrose Plantation, will be published in Fall 2018 by LSU Press. I've been published at The American Thinker, The Shreveport Times, The Bossier Press Tribune and had photographs published in Bayou Bucks magazine, The Forum, and other local publications. I like dogs better than most people.